True Story from a Life in Books:While working on my Master's degree at the University of Virginia, I took a class on fin de siecle literature. NaturalTrue Story from a Life in Books:While working on my Master's degree at the University of Virginia, I took a class on fin de siecle literature. Naturally, one evening, talk turned to the eruption of the gothic mode at the end of the 19th century. As we discussed whether or not Oscar Wilde's fantasies could be considered properly "gothic," I posited that the difference between, say, Wilde's Salome and a true 'gothic' like Castle of Otranto was the locus of the horror. "Stephen King makes a distinction in his extended essay Danse Macabre that horror can be divided into the 'democratic' and the 'republican,' internal and external sources of the horrific."

Dead silence. Finally, someone tittered into her hand. She was one of those rarified creatures who had done her undergraduate work at Harvard, who could drop names like 'Derrida' into casual conversation, and who I was always trying to emulate. "I'm sorry," she said gently. "I thought for a moment you said 'Stephen King.'" General merriment ensued at the notion, heh heh, that someone would bring up Stephen King in a *literature* class, at a *University*, doont-chew-know.

"Uh...yes. I did say Stephen King."

The conversation devolved from there. Upshot: Danse Macabre is pretty dated now, and horror afficianadoes who don't remember what the genre was like before the late 90's/early-2ks, and the infusion of Asian horror and 70s nostalgia, will likely not find much here that's familiar. But that doesn't matter. The ideas remain strong, and if King paints with a bit too broad a brush, and his usual self-indulgent jocularity, it's still a lot more takeable than the airy, meandering thoughts of most of the literary establishment, who still look at horror as an anomolous genre.

This is to books as the ungame is to games. It's not merely a different take on the medium, it rejects the medium outright and becomes something else.This is to books as the ungame is to games. It's not merely a different take on the medium, it rejects the medium outright and becomes something else.

Theoretically, a book has an author, a plot, characters, an ending. In the case of these Mysteries, you are the author. The plot is both numinously vague and personal to you, like religion. The characters are present in the softly shaded black and white illustrations, but their motivations, backstories, and personalities are yours to fabricate. The ending of each 'story' is only gestured at, but that gesture, like the butterfly wing in the famous analogy of chaos theory, sets up a turbulence which roils around in your brain.

Usually writing a story is difficult work, even for a seasoned writer. The prompts in this book make it difficult to *not* write down the story. They make your hands itch for pen and paper....more

Amusing note: if you search for 'we are in a book' in the GoodReads keyword searBaudrillardian self-conscious narratological textuality. For toddlers.

Amusing note: if you search for 'we are in a book' in the GoodReads keyword search box, you get two results: this book and the St. Martins Guide for Writers, the composition textbook written by my ex-boss. To paraphrase Steven Wright: it's a small world...but I wouldn't want to paint it.